Author: Doug LeMoine

Categories
basketball

Basketball / Hibachi!

I'm plan­ning to write a man­i­festo regard­ing cel­e­bra­tions in pro­fes­sion­al sports — Are they ever appro­pri­ate? I think so. But when? Where? How should they be reg­u­lat­ed? All good ques­tions. As I was look­ing for evi­dence of dif­fer­ent styles of cel­e­bra­tion, I found myself read­ing a lot about Wash­ing­ton Wiz­ards guard Gilbert Are­nas. In the past, he cel­e­brat­ed made bas­kets by exclaim­ing, "Hibachi!" In the Wikipedia entry for "hibachi", he is quot­ed as explan­ing it thus­ly, "You know, a hibachi grill gets real hot. That's what my shot's like, so I've been call­ing it that: Wel­come to the hibachi!'"The NYT not­ed that he also shouts "Guar­an­teed, yea-ah!†or "Let's make it hot-aaah" to punc­tu­ate a bas­ket. Add "Qual­i­ty shots!" to this list, after Kobe claimed that he takes too many bad ones. All of which prompts me to exclaim: I love this game! Are­nas reminds me of weirdo 70's base­ball play­ers, like Bill "Space­man" Lee (claimed his mar­i­jua­na use made him imper­vi­ous to bus fumes while jog­ging to work at Fen­way Park) and Mark Fidrych (talked to him­self while on the mound). His volu­mi­nous Wikipedia page con­tains dozens of anec­dotes, and links to many more. He has also inspired many excel­lent entries in Wash­ing­ton Post sports columns and blogs, includ­ing a clas­sic: "Gilbert Are­nas: I'm Not Quirky," which includes this scorcher:

When [Are­nas] was in Gold­en State, he once broke into Chris Mills's house, stole his throw­back jer­sey, then wore it on the team plane to upset him. "That's not weird. That's just fun­ny," Are­nas said, laugh­ing to himself.

Hibachi!

Categories
lit

Lit / Quang Phúc Ðông & pornolinguistics

As I poked around new-ish social net­work­ing sites tar­get­ed at wordy peo­ple (Library Thing — con­nect­ing through lists of books) and (Wordie — lists of words), I came across a ref­er­ence to a satir­i­cal paper enti­tled Eng­lish Sen­tences With­out Overt Gram­mat­i­cal Sub­jects.1 The paper's author is list­ed as Quang Phúc Ãông of the South Hanoi Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. As it turns out, the Insti­tute is fic­tion­al and the author's name is a nom de plume of a for­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go lin­guis­tics pro­fes­sor James D. McCaw­ley. This makes sense because the paper is both rig­or­ous­ly argued and pen­e­trat­ing­ly absurd (no pun intend­ed; okay, it was). The Wikipedia entry for scat­olin­guis­tics (also known as "porno­lin­guis­tics") cred­its him with invent­ing the field, the "study (includ­ing ety­mol­o­gy and cur­rent usage) of all rude and pro­fane expres­sions." In any case, there's lots of stuff worth explor­ing further: 

1 I post­ed the paper on my site because the cur­rent web pub­li­ca­tion appears to be part of a mid-90's‑era email thread, and is there­fore rather unfor­mat­ted. I post­ed it here to opti­mize for eas­i­er read­ing on the screen.

Categories
lit the ancient past

Lit / Simpler, more anarchic times

Anarchism!

Let's just say that I've crossed paths with the Anar­chist Cook­book [Wikipedia] [Ama­zon] a cou­ple of times in my life. In my youth, mak­ing a film can­is­ter bomb was a pop­u­lar diver­sion, and the cook­book teach­es you how to make it with stuff you can buy at a sci­en­tif­ic mate­r­i­al sup­ply store. The first step is mak­ing gun­pow­der — a much more straight­for­ward process than you'd think. Before I moved to Berke­ley in 1995, I'd nev­er owned a copy — I didn't even know that it was sold in book­stores. I fig­ured that you'd have to locate some anar­chists and then trade them some veg­an stir fry and/or a black hood­ie if you want­ed a copy. But soon after I moved here, I ran across a real­ly old copy of it (at Shake­speare and Co on Tele­graph, for those keep­ing track), and I fig­ured that it couldn't hurt to have it around. You nev­er know when you're going to need to make mus­tard gas, right? I brought it up to the counter, and the clerk — a griz­zled, old­er Berke­ley bear­do — glanced at the cov­er, then looked grave­ly at me. He said: "I'm sor­ry, but I'm going to need to see some ID before I sell you this." Assum­ing that one need­ed to be 18 years old to buy it, I start­ed to reach into my pock­et. He start­ed laugh­ing, and said some­thing like, "Hey man, I'm just kid­ding. We still live in a free coun­try, right?" I laughed, and then anoth­er clerk added, "Yeah, some­day you'll have to reg­is­ter that book with the local police." It was qui­et for a moment, and then we all laughed. Was 1995 real­ly that long ago? It seems like a much sim­pler time.Related: the Draino bomb. Beware.UPDATE: I didn't read the Ama­zon entry for this book before I wrote this, but I just noticed that it con­tains a note from the author, William Pow­ell, who request­ed that the book be tak­en out of print: "Dur­ing the years that fol­lowed its pub­li­ca­tion, I went to uni­ver­si­ty, mar­ried, became a father and a teacher of ado­les­cents. These devel­op­ments had a pro­found moral and spir­i­tu­al effect on me. I found that I no longer agreed with what I had writ­ten ear­li­er and I was becom­ing increas­ing­ly uncom­fort­able with the ideas that I had put my name to."Salon chimed in when it learned of Powell's request: "It must be hard to spend your whole life try­ing to live down an unedit­ed screed that you wrote at the surly age of 19, which just hap­pens to con­tain some recipes that might acci­den­tal­ly kill, maim or oth­er­wise dis­com­bob­u­late the bud­ding anar­chists try­ing to brew them."

Categories
kansas city the ancient past

Kansas City / Home for the holidays

Flickr photo


I love Flickr, but the good times are killing me. It's got too many amaz­ing high-def and beau­ti­ful­ly com­posed pho­tos. How do they do it? After doing some research, I decid­ed to step up my game and picked up a fan­cy­pants cam­era. Above is one of the first pic­tures I took with it, a panora­ma of down­town Kansas City from the Lib­er­ty Memo­r­i­al. The bent hori­zon is the result of a cheap‑o fish-eye attach­ment that I bought on Ama­zon. I used the 30D/­fish-eye set­up through­out the hol­i­days, as you'll see in this set, and while I had fun, I also had the inevitable real­iza­tion that an equip­ment upgrade doesn't auto­mat­i­cal­ly result in glo­ri­ous, high-def pho­tos. Back to the draw­ing board. Or the dark room. Or the Inter­net forums. While I was in KC, I sam­pled some of its finest. I vis­it­ed some home­grown let­ter­press print­ers (Ham­mer­press), ate some leg­endary BBQ (Fiorella's Jack Stack in Mar­tin City and Gates on Main), and made a pil­grim­age to a bas­ket­ball tem­ple (Allen Field­house, to wit­ness KU's run-and-gun thump­ing of Boston Col­lege). All in all, a mer­ry and bright time.

Categories
law & order reviews

Stupid BCS / Viva Boise State!

Ques­tion: What do you call it when the rich­est seg­ment gets to deter­mine all the rules, and they do so in a way that pre­vents mem­bers of the less rich from access­ing the advan­tages avail­able to the rich? A sham? A trav­es­ty? Un-Amer­i­can? Ladies and gen­tle­men, I give you the BCS.After Monday's barn-burn­ing over­time take­down of Okla­homa [watch the leg­endary fourth-and-18 hook-and-lat­er­al one more time], Boise State pro­vides a slew of new rea­sons why a more egal­i­tar­i­an post-sea­son sched­ule makes sense: (1) Obvi­ous Cin­derel­la pos­si­bil­i­ties. No mat­ter how under-rat­ed they may be at a cer­tain point in time, a team from a "pow­er" con­fer­ence could nev­er tru­ly be a Cin­derel­la. Who wouldn't want to watch Boise State get a chance to go toe-to-toe with Ohio State? (2) Gun-sling­ing play-call­ing. Even if Steve Spurri­er would have run the hook-and-lat­er­al on 4th and 18, he would have nev­er called the (mod­i­fied) Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty when going for 2 with the game on the line. Out­side of Spurrier's occa­sion­al chi­canery, you just don't see that kind of stuff, ever, except by inspired teams with noth­ing to lose; (3) The chance to see a mid-major admin­is­ter a crush­ing beat­down to Notre Dame. Enough said.This much is clear: Col­lege foot­ball is more like pro­fes­sion­al box­ing than like col­lege bas­ket­ball. Many com­peti­tors, many belts, much con­fu­sion as to who is cham­pi­on. For both, impar­tial reg­u­la­tion would be bet­ter for every­one *except* the peo­ple who cur­rent­ly run the sanc­tion­ing bod­ies — the WBA, the WBC, the IBF, and the BCS.

Categories
music web

Design / The Beatles & collaboration

A lot of col­lab­o­ra­tive work goes on at Coop­er (where I work). Design­ers team up to under­stand a prob­lem, or to envi­sion a bet­ter way of solv­ing it. Some­times, we col­lab­o­rate with clients to fig­ure out what's pos­si­ble and where pos­si­bil­i­ty and desir­abil­i­ty meet. In any case, it's hard to trace back any par­tic­u­lar idea to a par­tic­u­lar per­son or moment; once an idea is out in the world, it gets pushed, pulled, dis­as­sem­bled, reassem­bled, and so on by every­one until it fits. My friends and I used to argue over which Bea­t­le wrote a par­tic­u­lar song — John? Paul? George? In most cas­es, it seems pret­ty clear cut. Cheesy lyrics and a boun­cy rhythm? Paul. More com­pli­cat­ed, lay­ered lyrics with more straight-ahead rock? John. A sitar in the back­ground? George. In some cas­es, how­ev­er, it's much less clear. "With A Lit­tle Help From My Friends," for instance; or, "Got To Get You Into My Life." Both have rec­og­niz­able ear­marks of John and Paul.Are these easy cat­e­go­riza­tions valid in any way? Is there any way of ulti­mate­ly know­ing who wrote what? I didn't think so. Until I Googled "bea­t­les song­writ­ing" and found The Bea­t­les Song­writ­ing and Record­ing Data­base, an obses­sive­ly cat­e­go­rized col­lec­tion quotes about who wrote what, pulled from var­i­ous inter­views con­duct­ed over the last 40 years.For example:

With A Lit­tle Help From My FriendsJOHN 1970: "Paul had the line about 'a lit­tle help from my friends.' He had some kind of struc­ture for it, and we wrote it pret­ty well fifty-fifty from his orig­i­nal idea."JOHN 1980: "That's Paul, with a lit­tle help from me. 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine' is mine."PAUL cir­ca-1994: "This was writ­ten out at John's house in Wey­bridge for Ringo… I think that was prob­a­bly the best of our songs that we wrote for Ringo actu­al­ly. I remem­ber gig­gling with John as we wrote the lines, 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine.' It could have been him play­ing with his willie under the cov­ers, or it could have been tak­en on a deep­er lev­el. This is what it meant but it was a nice way to say it– a very non-spe­cif­ic way to say it. I always liked that." 

Espe­cial­ly intrigu­ing: John wrote "And Your Bird Can Sing," which (to me) seems to be the most obvi­ous Paul song ever. Per­haps those ear­marks I dis­cussed ear­li­er are less applic­a­ble than one would expect.

Categories
flickr new york san francisco the ancient past

Thanksgiving remix

Flickr photo

Thanks­giv­ing 2006 came and went, attend­ed by friends, fam­i­ly and the cus­tom­ary dra­mas. An East Coast / West Coast feud flared up in the week before the hol­i­day. Gabriel (East) sent what some in the West per­ceived as "a sal­vo across the bow" in the form of a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion (a slide of which is pic­tured below). It con­tained a finan­cial-style analy­sis of Thanks­giv­ing: how Thanks­giv­ing East has per­formed over the past decade, trends, pro­jec­tions, and out­lines for future growth. Some saw this as evi­dence of a dia­bol­i­cal plan; I was naive and asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on specifics:

Dear Gabe, TYs (Thanks­giv­ing years) 2003–2004 were char­ac­ter­ized by broad guest sec­tor diver­si­fi­ca­tion. What is the like­li­hood that a diver­si­fied strat­e­gy, with expo­sure to the Shana­han sec­tor, for exam­ple, will be pur­sued in the future? Sec­ond­ly, to what extent will "val­ue" guests (e.g., McClo­rys and Preslers) con­tin­ue to anchor the port­fo­lio? Will you pur­sue more (poten­tial­ly) volatile "growth" guests in order to boost per­for­mance in the com­ing years? 

Gabe replied:

Gabe's projection infographic

Like oth­er mis­sion-relat­ed offer­ings, we believe that diver­si­fi­ca­tion is impor­tant for ensur­ing steady, depend­able per­for­mance in any envi­ron­ment to pro­tect against sec­tor-spe­cif­ic risk. But our com­mit­ment to diver­si­fi­ca­tion goes beyond our con­cern for the bot­tom line: indeed, we believe that it reflects our group's core mis­sion. We are con­vinved that when we serve a broad range of atten­dants and when our offer­ings range across the geo­graph­ic and social spec­trum, our Thanks­giv­ing is ulti­mate­ly stronger.I want to empha­size that we con­sid­er all of our par­tic­i­pants "core" can­di­dates. Alas, our com­mit­ment to value–illustrated by our proven track record of offer­ing Thanks­giv­ing at a deep dis­count to its intrin­sic value–means that we are not always able to serve as broad a con­stituen­cy as we would like. For exam­ple, many of our sought-after par­tic­i­pants fall out­side of our geo­graph­ic uni­verse; we are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in oppor­tu­ni­ties in California. 

Need­less to say, this kind of talk elicit­ed skep­ti­cism and cries of region­al pride among the West Coast­ers, feel­ings which became even more acute when addi­tion­al news arrived: The East Coast guest list had grown so large, so ginor­mous, that the hosts scram­bled to find larg­er accom­mo­da­tions for their dinner. 

Now [East Coast Thank­giv­ing] reports that their 2006 expan­sion plan has been so suc­cess­ful that they're relo­cat­ing to a BAR for their fes­tiv­i­ties. clear­ly the bar has been raised. are we going to let presler corp. out­do us at what we do best? we have to ral­ly around the turkey and show the east coast who rules this holiday.

Would cool­er heads pre­vail? Some West Coast­ers called for "focus."

i hate to say it, but this whole thing reeks of a ploy to take us off our game. start chas­ing the presler-yamadas with this whole thanks­giv­ing at the bar thing, and next thing you know you'll be doing blow off some stranger's anato­my at 5am while real­iz­ing that you for­got to even *buy* a turkey. we have to stick to what got us here. the fun­da­men­tals and an easy-going atti­tude that there's no rea­son to get stressed out because our moms are at least like a thou­sand miles away … focus, people.

Laying on of hands

Of course, Thanks­giv­ings of yore were char­ac­ter­ized by spon­tanae­ity that often resem­bled chaos. (See right. More here.). To this end, there were appeals to pull together: 

If Robert Alt­man taught us any­thing it's that great works of art are NOT cre­at­ed with scripts, busi­ness plans or Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tions. We will hon­or his tra­di­tion and fol­low our usu­al free-flow­ing, impro­vised pat­tern. We will cre­ate a rich­ly lay­ered Thanks­giv­ing that will touch on all of the major themes of mod­ern life in a heart­break­ing, at times com­i­cal, at times vio­lent, but always inci­sive way. Like Alt­man, we are not afraid of fail­ure. How­ev­er, it's also true that some great works of art were cre­at­ed with blow (John Belushi, the DeLore­an, Dwight Gooden) …

In the end, there was focus and togeth­er­ness on the West Coast, and, by all accounts, steady growth with div­i­dends in the East. A wise man once said: "Let love rule." It shall.

Categories
new york urban

NYT / JFK to Manhattan on foot

"Peo­ple don't know where they are any­more, " [the writer Will Self] said, adding: "In the post-indus­tri­al age, [walk­ing] is the only form of real explo­ration left. Any­one can go and see the Ituri pygmy, but how many peo­ple have walked all the way from the air­port to the city?â€

This is from A Lit­er­ary Vis­i­tor Strolls in From the Air­port, a New York Times account of writer Will Self's walk from JFK to his hotel in Man­hat­tan. Self walks 20 miles through a col­or­ful cross-sec­tion of Queens, tak­ing pho­tos and chat­ting about his phi­los­o­phy of per­am­bu­la­tion. Cars (and TVs and com­put­ers and so on) have imposed a "wind­screen-based vir­tu­al­i­ty," he says, effec­tive­ly cut­ting us off from the land­scape around us. The NYT writer name-checks psy­cho­geog­ra­phy in con­nec­tion with this dis­cus­sion, but doesn't elab­o­rate. Appar­ent­ly, psy­cho­geog­ra­phy is a com­mon, every­day con­cept in which every­one is con­ver­sant. (I would guess that it's not). Also dis­cussed: Self's seat-of-the-pants route-plan­ning (he relied upon native New York­er Rick Moody), and his expe­ri­ences in the less-trav­eled parts of the borough:

Not long after nego­ti­at­ing the Cross Bay Park­way over­pass, Mr. Self decid­ed to go "off piste,†as he put it, bor­row­ing the term used to describe [the act of leav­ing] groomed ski runs [to explore wild ter­rain]. He ignored Mr. Moody's instruc­tions and head­ed straight west on Glen­more Avenue, through East New York and Brownsville. Glen­more at this point slices through a long, grim stretch of low-rise apart­ments, pock­et-size auto-body shops, razor-wired vacant lots har­bor­ing high-strung dogs, and a sur­pris­ing num­ber of church­es, includ­ing one, Glen­more Avenue Pres­by­ter­ian, that fea­tured a Sun­day-morn­ing "Apoc­alip­sis†service."What could be more suitable?†said Mr. Self, who had just been dis­cussing the apoc­a­lyp­tic theme in his own nov­el and those of H. G. Wells.

A relat­ed per­son­al account: Once, in the fall of 1997, my flight had arrived late to JFK, and I was rac­ing to catch the last Delta com­muter flight to Boston, which was leav­ing from a dif­fer­ent ter­mi­nal. When I arrived at the curb, the secu­ri­ty guard told me that the shut­tle bus had just left, and that I'd prob­a­bly miss my flight. He men­tioned that the ter­mi­nal was "just beyond that big TWA hang­er over there," and I thanked him and set off walk­ing. Need­less to say, there weren't side­walks con­nect­ing the two, and I spent much of my time "off piste," scur­ry­ing along the shoul­ders of frontage roads and across park­ing lots. It was scary and fun, with planes peri­od­i­cal­ly screech­ing just over­heard, but I arrived just in time, and since then I've always want­ed a chance to do it again.

Categories
music

Music / Sad anniverary for the quiet Beatle

Today is the fifth anniver­sary of George Harrison's death, as I found out when NPR ran a sweet trib­ute to him this evening. Back when such things mat­tered, George was my favorite Bea­t­le. Why do such things not mat­ter any­more? I mean, real­ly, is there any ques­tion that is more reveal­ing than "Who is your favorite Bea­t­le?" Sure, it's dat­ed, but any ratio­nal, music-aware per­son should have one, and if they don't, well, that says a lot right there. Here's a cheat sheet for what you can expect from the peo­ple you ask, based on very unsci­en­tif­ic "research" …

  • If they say "Paul," you can expect some (most­ly super­fi­cial) charm, and a lib­er­al help­ing of cheesi­ness. Peo­ple who like Paul tend to see Sgt. Pep­per as the height of Bea­t­le achieve­ment, and they prob­a­bly enjoy "Yel­low Sub­ma­rine" and "sto­ry songs" about Bea­t­les char­ac­ters like Eleanor Rig­by more than "While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps" or "Nor­we­gian Wood."
  • If they say "John," you can expect seri­ous­ness, out­ward lefty pol­i­tics, a love of "mean­ing­ful" songs, and per­haps a dis­dain for both cheesi­ness and Paul. Peo­ple who like John, I would guess, sim­ply didn't like Paul to begin with, or liked him until they heard "When I'm 64" one too many times, and then dug around to see who wrote the lyrics to "A Day in the Life."
  • No one ever says "Ringo" in this day and age, and that's too bad. He's charm­ing, a good sport, and (I think) not as bad a drum­mer as peo­ple seem to remem­ber. I chal­lenge you: Lis­ten to "Rain" and tell me that Ringo is an insuf­fer­ably bad drummer.
  • George, final­ly, will always be the favorite of peo­ple who you want to know. He rep­re­sents humil­i­ty, first of all. He's nev­er mug­ging in the movies, and most­ly he looks some­what like you or I would look if we were thrown into the Bea­t­les com­mer­cial jug­ger­naut in the ear­ly 60's. On the cre­ativ­i­ty side, he wasn't Lennon/McCartney, but his gui­tar sound was an inte­gral part of the Bea­t­les appeal. It's always taste­ful, and he nev­er tries to get all Eric Clap­ton on any song, which is why I — for one — can lis­ten to rough­ly 50 Bea­t­les songs for every Eric Clap­ton song. Final­ly, George's solo stuff was way bet­ter than either Paul's or John's, and his low pro­file is endear­ing in a world in which the faces of rock stars' are per­pet­u­al­ly up in your grill.

Beatles, Taxman — from Alternate Revolver

[audio:http://www.douglemoine.org/files/beatles-taxman-mono.mp3]Lately, I've been lis­ten­ing to Alter­nate Revolver, a boot­leg album of demoes from the Revolver ses­sions. George's first con­tri­bu­tion to the Bea­t­les' cat­a­logue — "Tax­man" — is on Revolver; it's not my favorite Bea­t­les song, but it's a lit­tle more straight­for­ward and rockin' than lat­er George songs. Is it con­tra­dic­to­ry to com­mem­o­rate an artist by lis­ten­ing to a pirat­ed ver­sion of his/her work? Hmm. I'll ven­ture a guess that George would appre­ci­ate it, so check out Alter­nate Revolver's mono mix of the song, and toast the qui­et Beatle.

Categories
architecture inside art visual

Art / Robert Irwin, BS, and the importance of questions

Flickr photo

My nom­i­na­tion for All-Time Best Moment In An Art Doc­u­men­tary has to be the "Bull­shit!" scene in Con­cert Of Wills: Mak­ing The Get­ty Cen­ter. Abstract-artist-turned-land­scape-design­er Robert Irwin lit­er­al­ly calls bull­shit on archi­tect Richard Meier dur­ing an impor­tant Get­ty Cen­ter plan­ning ses­sion. [The object of their dis­agree­ment is Irwin's gar­den design, pic­tured at right. Thx, brew­books.] Design Observ­er's Michael Bierut sums it up nice­ly in an arti­cle called "On (Design) Bullshit:"

The [Get­ty Foun­da­tion], against Meier's advice, has brought in artist Robert Irwin to cre­ate the Center's cen­tral gar­den. The film­mak­ers are there to record the unveil­ing of Irwin's pro­pos­al, and Meier's dis­taste is evi­dent. The artist's bias for whim­si­cal organ­ic forms, his dis­re­gard for the architecture's rig­or­ous orthonog­ra­phy, and per­haps even his Detroit Tigers base­ball hat all rub Richard Meier the wrong way, and he and his team of archi­tects begin a rea­soned, strong­ly-felt cri­tique of the pro­posed plan. Irwin, sens­ing (cor­rect­ly, as it turns out) that he has the client in his pock­et, lis­tens patient­ly and then says, "You want my response?"His response is the worst accu­sa­tion you can lodge against a design­er: "Bull­shit."

If I recall cor­rect­ly, Meier is speech­less, and the mood of the doc­u­men­tary shifts quite sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Meier's per­son­al­i­ty and view­point had dom­i­nat­ed (is "dom­i­neered" a word?) ear­li­er scenes, he main­tains a sort of icy dis­tance in sub­se­quent scenes. (Dis­clo­sure: While I respect Meier, I'm not a fan of his work, espe­cial­ly the Get­ty, and the doc­u­men­tary makes clear that he is, umm, a dick). Irwin, on the oth­er hand, I've always loved, espe­cial­ly his dot paint­ings. I'm cur­rent­ly read­ing Lawrence Weschsler's biog­ra­phy of Irwin, See­ing Is For­get­ting the Name of the Thing One Sees, and it con­tains some use­ful back­ground and con­text to the "Bull­shit!" scene. It also com­pli­cates it; the more I read, the more Irwin and Meier seem to have quite a lot in com­mon. I'd always assumed that Irwin's vision was the irra­tional, organ­ic coun­ter­point to Meier's ratio­nal, geo­met­ric forms. The book makes clear that Irwin has quite a lot of the ratio­nal geom­e­try on the brain him­self. Per­haps they were just too sim­i­lar to get along.A large por­tion of the book is ded­i­cat­ed to Irwin's dis­cus­sion of his own process … My favorite pas­sage involves Irwin's expla­na­tions of the fits and starts that char­ac­ter­ized his out­put, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the dot paint­ing phase:

"Most of the time, I didn't have any idea where it was going; I had no intel­lec­tu­al clar­i­ty as to what it was I thought I was doing … Maybe I was just grad­u­al­ly devel­op­ing a trust in the act itself, that some­how, if it were pur­sued legit­i­mate­ly, the ques­tions it would raise would be legit­i­mate and the answers would have to exist some­where, would be worth pur­su­ing, and would be of consequence."Actually, dur­ing those years in the mid­six­ties," he dou­bled back on his for­mu­la­tion, "the answers seemed to mat­ter less and less: I was becom­ing much more of a ques­tion per­son than an answer per­son … The thing that real­ly struck me as I got into devel­op­ing my inter­est in the area of ques­tions," Irwin con­tin­ued, "is the degree to which as a cul­ture we are geared for just the oppo­site. We are past-mind­ed, in the sense that all of our sys­tems of mea­sure are devel­oped and in a sense depen­dent upon a kind of phys­i­cal res­o­lu­tion. We tag our renais­sances at the high­est lev­el of per­for­mance, where­as it's fair­ly clear to me that once the ques­tion is raised, the per­for­mance is some­what inevitable, almost just a mop­ping-up oper­a­tion, mere­ly a mat­ter of time."